


Look After You

by gratuitously1d



Category: One Direction (Band), X Factor RPF
Genre: Angst, Community: 1dangstmeme, Crying, Friendship, Gen, Implied abuse, Implied dubcon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-24
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-10 22:12:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gratuitously1d/pseuds/gratuitously1d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zayn has never been comfortable with people crying. He even feels awful when he reads about characters crying or worse, watching people cry in movies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Look After You

**Author's Note:**

> Beta: [](http://accrues.livejournal.com/profile)[**accrues**](http://accrues.livejournal.com/)
> 
> For 1dangstmeme [prompt](http://1dangstmeme.livejournal.com/996.html?thread=140516#t140516): Zayn doesn't really know what to do when people cry, but he does know that he can't just pretend it's not happening when Harry is sobbing so loudly he can hear him from another room. So Zayn awkardly tries to be comforting, in a "there, there" sort of way.

Zayn has never been comfortable with people crying. He even feels awful when he reads about characters crying or worse, watching people cry in movies. It just seems like a really personal thing. He’s seen people cry lots of times before; he has sisters and they cry a lot. His mum cries when he has to leave. It’s definitely not for lack of exposure to crying. It just never feels any less awkward to him.

On the one hand, Zayn doesn’t know what to do when someone is crying. On the other hand, he just wants to cry with them. And that is hard for him to take because he doesn’t want anyone else to see that moment. It’s intensely private. He wouldn’t want anyone else to have to feel this helpless either. So sometimes it can be a bit weird when fans cry around him. He doesn’t know what to say or do, so he tries to be comforting. Usually it makes it worse. Zayn is always grateful when someone like Louis takes over. For someone known as “the joker” of the band, you wouldn’t think it, but Louis deals with sadness really well. There’s a lot that people don’t see, that they don’t know.

Zayn has been watching TV in the lounge, turning the volume up so he doesn’t have to hear the argument going on in the other room. He sees Louis walk past him, slamming the front door. It’s loud, and Zayn jumps a little. That’s when he hears it. A loud, trembling exhale breaking through the white noise of the television. It’s mean, but for a moment Zayn wonders if he should turn the sound up so that he doesn’t have to hear it. Zayn’s heart sinks because Liam is out with Danielle, and Niall went shopping, and Louis just stormed out, so it leaves Harry. Maybe Harry doesn’t want him to hear it. Maybe he doesn’t want him to know. But Zayn know he could never leave it because his friend is obviously in pain.

It’s not just crying but loud heaving sobs and it scares Zayn. Then there’s a smash and a hoarse scream, and the awful grating noise of abusing your vocal cords while bawling your eyes out. The tall brunette boy takes a deep breath and goes to the source of the crying. The door is closed and even through it he can hear the crying. Please stop, he thinks because it sounds painful. It must hurt to make such inhuman sounds. There’s a tiny part of him that wants it to stop too because he hurts when he hears it and he isn’t sure that he has anything to offer Harry that could comfort a hurt that is obviously so large, overwhleming.

Zayn looks around and grabs the box of tissues under the coffee table before approaching Harry and Louis’ room. He knocks lightly but the crying doesn’t stop. He knocks louder.

“Hey, Harry are you okay?”

Harry doesn’t answer with words. It sounds like he’s crying harder.

“I’m uh, coming in.”

The curly haired boy is slumped next to the broken lamp beside the bed. The light bulb and cover has smashed, and the pieces are all over the carpet, dangerously close to Harry’s limbs. He’s only wearing his black boxers, legs folded up beneath him. His shoulders are shaking with every hiccupping breath.

“Harry?”

As Zayn steps closer, Harry puts his hands over his face, ducking down and shaking his head. Zayn winces as he crouches down in front of Harry. He’s glad he wore shoes because the carpet is crunching under his feet.

“C’mon, let me help you up? There’s glass everywhere.”

Harry shakes his head and mumbles or moans, Zayn can’t really tell. When Zayn nudges the box of tissues at Harry, he takes a bundle without looking at it. He is blowing his nose loudly before making sad whining noises, and Zayn still doesn’t know what to do. He flexes his toes inside his shoes and decides that he’ll hoist Harry up and maybe he’ll clean up. Yeah, that’s helpful.

“I’m just going to put the tissues on the bed okay?”

Harry doesn’t answer, making pitiful sounds into the wad of tissues.

“Right. I’m going to get you up here away from the glass so I can vacuum the worst of it. Wouldn’t want you to step on it yeah?”

Zayn slides a hand around Harry’s forearm gently but Harry shrinks away from him, towards the glass before releasing another sob. “Fuck,” Zayn swears in frustration and Harry flinches again.

“Okay, sorry, okay.” Zayn holds up his hands placating even though Harry hasn’t looked up once.

Harry is listing to the side like he wants to curl up in the bed of glass and it’s a spur of the moment decision. He looks so tiny and breakable that Zayn hooks an arm under Harry’s knees and cradles him against his chest before lifting him up. Harry lets out another cry before burying his face in Zayn’s shirt. Harry is lighter than he would have thought and Zayn’s worry builds. It doesn’t make the older boy feel any better when he thinks of his hands against Harry’s ribs, like he could count them.

Putting the younger boy down as gently as he can, Zayn waits for Harry to unlatch from him but it seems like Harry doesn’t want to. He’s pulling at Zayn’s shirt, the back of it pushing him down as if Harry is his anchor. Zayn gets a glimpse of Harry’s face, eyes rimmed with red, puffy and swollen from crying. His nose is running and his lower lip cracked from biting so hard on it. Harry has one wad of tissues in his hand and his other is tangled in Zayn’s top. Zayn goes with it, sitting sideways on the bed, kicking his shoes off and swinging his legs up so Harry can hide his face again in Zayn’s chest with a wet sniffle.

Zayn brings his hands up to hold Harry against him, hugging him as the boy keeps crying. He thinks of all the questions people normally ask when someone is upset. _What’s wrong? Do you want to talk about it?_ Or the comforting things you’re supposed to say, _It’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay._ But it’s obvious that something is wrong. Asking what’s wrong is stupid. It’s also obvious that Harry doesn’t- _can’t_ talk about it. That’s not okay. How can that be okay? Zayn doesn’t know what to say and he feels like he should say something. One of his good friends is completely…broken, and it’s dumb and unrealistic to think that anything he could say will make Harry feel better but he wishes it anyway.

“Harry,” Zayn says helplessly when he thinks the crying is subsiding a bit.

Harry lets out a shuddering exhale before loosening his grip slightly but not letting go.

Zayn props himself up so he can grab some more tissues. Harry takes them gratefully, mumbling his thanks. Zayn winces because his voice is wrecked and they have a performance tomorrow, and he hates himself for even thinking about it.

Harry is blowing his noise and hiccupping. Aware that Harry is half-naked, Zayn pulls the sheets up over Harry’s legs. That’s when he notices the healing bruises dotting the inside of his thighs, the fading yellow blotches peeking above his waistband. Zayn sucks in his breath because he has all these questions and Harry is lying there shivering with the aftershocks of his crying and he’s _hurt_. Zayn pulls the sheet higher, trying to cover the marks so he doesn’t have to see- think about them and who might have done such a thing and why. But when he pulls the sheets up to under Harry’s armpits, arranging him like a doll, he sees more finger-shaped bruises on the underside of his bicep.

“Harry,” Zayn tries again. He doesn’t know what he can and can’t ask. He can’t just ignore it. “Did- did,” _Louis_ springs to Zayn’s mind and he feels so, so guilty for thinking it, “someone hurt you?”

With those words, Harry’s sobs start again and Zayn can’t hear anything but the sound of Harry crying. Harry is turning away from him, scrabbling sideways like he wants to get up, but the sheets are tangled and he doesn’t go far. Pale hands cover his mouth and eyes and it’s not nearly enough to muffle the unmistakable sounds.

“Are you hurt? What happened? Tell me what’s wrong. Please,” Zayn says. Harry’s crying is drowning out his pleas to understand. He just shakes his head and Zayn feels bad for having made him start again. The older boy wants to shake Harry, make him tell him what’s wrong because if he doesn’t tell then how is he supposed to know what to do to make it better? What can he do to help?

“Please Harry,” Zayn says desperately, feeling tears well up inside him too. Zayn blinks hard to keep them away because now is not the time, Harry is here and he can’t cry. If he sits there and cries then they’ll both be useless. “Please don’t cry.”

Harry is crying so hard that it sounds like he can’t breathe and it must hurt. Zayn knows that when you cry for a long time, as he did when his grandfather died, it gives you a headache and it feels as if your chest hurts from all the heaving and it’s painful. Harry makes a retching sound and then he’s heaving over the side of the bed and crying, crying, crying.

“It’s okay,” Zayn babbles. “I’ll clean it up. That’s not a problem. No one has to know.” Then he regrets saying it because he wants to call Liam, maybe he’ll know what to do. Or maybe Niall can cheer him up. Or Louis. Maybe it’s Louis that Harry wants. Zayn just feels like he’s not helping at all. He would rather go clean up the mess but he doesn’t think he should leave Harry there. The curly haired boy is so distraught.

Zayn reaches over to pull a stream of tissues on top of the mess in a pathetic attempt to mop it up.

“I won’t ask again. Sorry, just- breathe, yeah?” Zayn stops himself before the platitudes he wants to say spills out of him, because unless he knows what’s wrong, everything he says will probably be a lie. He doesn’t know that it’s going to be okay and he can’t promise it. “I’m here,” he says, and it’s really all he can offer. He untangles the sheet slowly and covers Harry up like he’s a child. “There, there,” he says smoothing the sheets and rubbing Harry’s back in circles the way his mum did. He wishes his mum was here or Harry’s mum – they always know how to make things better. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. Just close your eyes and take a deep breath. Then let it go.”

He hears Harry take a wet inhale and his exhale ends with a hiccup, but there it is.

“That’s it,” Zayn says encouragingly, breathing along with him.  



End file.
